Journal

Category: CSS

CSS Eleven

October 08, 2007

CSS Eleven
Last week, Andy Clarke announced a new CSS group I’m thrilled to be part of: CSS Eleven.

I’m going to leave the detailed explanation to Andy, but in a nutshell, the group is going to help the ‘W3C’s CSS Working Group to better deliver the tools needed for tomorrow’s web’. I’m particularly interested in having the opportunity to be involved in the several layout modules which have thus far been proposed.

Andy’s rounded up a fantastic bunch of designers and developers here. Hopefully we’ll have the collective clout to influence things in a positive way in the months to come.

Incremental leading

June 15, 2007

There has been a lot said recently about Vertical Rhythm. Richard Rutter began the work on 24ways last year with the piece ‘Compose to a Vertical Rhythm’. This was built upon by Wilson Minor on A List Apart recently with his article on Baseline Grids. All sound typographic advice. If you haven’t read both of them, I’d urge you to do so now otherwise you know what I’m on about it in this post.

At @media this year, I presented ‘Five Simple Steps to Better Typography’. Step two in my presentation was was Vertical Rhythm where I reiterated some of the excellent points Richard made in his article and also the presentation we both gave in at SXSW in March. I also added something of my own: Incremental leading, or Incremental line-height.

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Semantic Typography: Bridging the XHTML gap

November 24, 2005

In the Web Standards community we hear the words 'Semantic Markup' thrown around a lot as a concept—the right thing to do— but I know a lot of designers who are trying to learn this stuff are being confused by the whole 'semantic thing'.

It's a difficult task for a designer, who primarily thinks very visually, to relate to a concept like semantics in a document when all they want to do is create something.

After doing a ton of research over the past couple of weeks I've begun to notice links and patterns between typographic theory and Web Standards.

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Carson Workshops - CSS for Designers

November 18, 2005

Here I am, sat on a train, stuffed full of Sushi awaiting the train to finally pull away so I can start my long trip home (about four hours depending on which signal's decide to fail). After buying my 12inch iBook in July, this is the first time I've used it in a truly mobile capacity and so far it's going well. Anyway, I'm not going to go about sushi, trains or laptops in this post. Today, I had the great pleasure of attending the 'CSS for Designers' workshop hosted by Carson Workshops in London. What a day it was.

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Professional CSS: A first look

August 08, 2005

{title}I've just received my copy of Professional CSS - Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design so I'd thought I'd share my first thoughts after flicking through the book.

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Now with ‘zoom’ layout

July 02, 2005

It's amazing how productive an afternoon watching a gig can be.

Following Joe Clark's excellent presentation at @media and his equally excellent article at A List Apart, I thought it's about time I did something to address the accessibility options on this site.

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“It’s only a green stripe at the top”

March 23, 2005

After being featured by those lovely people at Stylegala and CSS Vault I thought it might be a an idea to give a bit of a deconstruction of the design here at markboulton.co.uk. This post was also prompted by Narayan over at Etherfarm and his great post, "all this fuss over some measly boxes"

So, what I want to deconstruct is the process I went through to come to this design and hopefully give some sort of answer to the title of this post.

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London and the Vault

January 21, 2005

In less than an hour i’ll be getting in my car, with my wife, and off to visit friends in London. Really looking forward to it. It’ll be just over three years since i’ve been to London properly after living there for a few years, so visiting old haunts will be nice.

Another note. I’m chuffed to bits that i’ve finally made it into the CSS Vault. Thanks go to Mark for the submission.

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Of interest ...

4Talent - A FONT OF KNOWLEDGE
Channel 4 Talent interviews me about design
Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours
Joe Clark's new book.
Drupal.org: come wireframe with me!
Leisa calls on the community to take part in an interesting group wireframing exercise
disambiguity - " Opening the floodgates! How to participate in the Drupal.org redesign project
Leisa opens the floodgates with many channels by which to participate in the Drupal.org redesign project.
FF Meta Serif
Great looking minisite for FF Meta Serif
Clagnut: A new design
Richard cooks up a splendid redesign to Clagnut. Wonderfully understated.
A List Apart: Putting Our Hot Heads Together
Carolyn Wood writes about the value of thoughtful discussion in participation on the web. Beautifully written.

These links are now pulled from my del.icio.us account. You can subscribe to the feed if you like.

My books

Web Standards Creativity Buy Five Simple Steps: Designing for the Web

Stuff I like

The Britpack!

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A picture of Mark BoultonI'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for Agency.com in London as an Art Director before working as a Senior Designer for the BBC in sunny Cardiff. This was all before I took leave of my senses and formed my own design consultancy, Mark Boulton Design Ltd.

I've got a thing about grids and typography and occasionally ramble on about them to anyone who will listen.

If you're after simple, clean and effective web design; let me know.